by Mansell G. Upham ©
Historian Hermann Giliomee has extolled the virtues of the intellectual / creative writings of three men he considers to have enhanced the growth and esteem of the Afrikaans language: historian Piet van der Merwe, jurist J.C. de Wet and writer/philosopher N.P. van Wyk Louw (‘Afrikaans se groei en aansien deur gehalte van skeppende werk bepaal’, Die Burger 25 March 2000).
What makes them all the more admirable, he claims, is the fact that they chose to write in their ‘native’ tongue, thereby opting for a smaller audience even when their English capability (being unimpaired?) would have ensured them greater exposure, fame or appreciation.
But it is the lesser-known (even to most Afrikaans-speakers / writers?) Piet van der Merwe that gets the most exposure this time – all because of his pioneering work on the Cape migrant farmers (trekboere) which has finally been translated into at least English 60 years later.
The book is the story of the main bulk of ‘Afrikaners’ (Giliomee’s term) that lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. Giliomee considers Van der Merwe to have asked questions quite different from other ‘ordinary’ historians suggesting that he even may have been before-his-time. Furthermore, it is claimed that the work is remarkably free from racism.
Examples of such questions are:
* How did it happen that a small farming colony at the tip of Africa come to be transformed into a large permanent or established colony (‘vestigingskolonie’) having livestock as primary commodity?
* What values (‘waardes’) enabled them to escape (dodge?) a process of ‘verwildering’ (becoming degenerate? savage?) (‘ ‘… ‘n proses van verwildering vry te spring …”) whilst in terrific isolation?
* What were the influences of education and religion (‘die Statebybel’)?
* What race relations did they develop?
The bitter struggle for survival against the ‘Bushmen’, Van der Merwe regarded as a clash of different cultures and economies.
Van der Merwe’s questions appear to still linger in the minds of those struggling to deconstruct the concept ‘Afrikaner’. I somehow doubt whether his questions are particularly extraordinary or novel or pioneering.
His premise that migrant farmers were isolated and armed with values (superior?) that prevented them from falling into ‘savagery’ or ‘barbarism’, is not only questionable, but it is elitist. When will we acknowledge that ‘Hottentots’ – of all people – were/are not the lowest form of humanity? When will we be more amenable to the less prurient observations of visitor-writers like Schreyer, de Greyvensteyn, Peter Kolb et al?
Van der Merwe’s view that clashes with the Khoe / San amount simply to a ‘clash’ of different cultures and economies is reductionist.
In lauding Van der Merwe’s virtues as a racist-free(?) historian and far-seeing promoter of the Afrikaans language, Giliomee fails to appreciate that Van der Merwe’s view of cultures ‘clashing’ or ‘colliding’ is narrow when compared to an analysis that views cultures-in-conflict as something more than just collisions. Contacts and relationships also need to be taken into consideration.
The trekboers were NEVER in isolation.
After contact, comes collision, conflict, co-existence, cohabitation, tolerance and even merger …
There exists sufficient evidence that trekboer culture was no different to that of the ‘Hottentots’ (which latter term should be understood to cover a multitude of virtues: Bushman, Basters, outcasts, outlaws and Khoekhoe – detribalised or otherwise) and that the intercourse (in every sense of the word) between them and the indigenes was sufficiently advanced.
Genealogists can confirm this to some extent …
Did Namaqualanders on the northern frontier really manage (by means of some miracle) to dodge savagery and help preserve the nucleus of existing Western Christian ‘civilisation’ that we know today?
And should we be grateful?
Muatze 